Christian Wolmar

The franchise merry go round is starting again with the ridiculous short contract for East Anglia, and the longer term one for the West Coast, which, in contrast, is premium franchise on the network. The franchise process is a long and arduous one, and despite attempts to simplify it, there are already complaints from bidders about the obstacles they face. In order to familiarise myself with how a franchise bid is ...

The search for about £1-1.5bn cuts to the rail industry is now on. That’s broadly the amount that will need to be taken out of the industry – which currently turns over around £11bn, £5bn of which comes from the government. Assuming that transport has to take a bit more than its fair share, it always does, even if rail bears less than other modes, we are still talking of ...

The confusion over franchising policy could not be better highlighted by the mixed messages coming from ministers. On the one hand we have quite explicit threats suggesting that the government could take back the First Capital Connect franchise because of months of dire performance on the Thameslink line - why did they ever change the name? - while on the other we have Lord Adonis suggesting that longer franchises are ...

Theresa Villiers, the shadow transport secretary, has done her homework and come up with a well-informed speech about the Tories plans for the railways. Given to a political thinktank, Politeia, earlier this month, the speech contained nothing startlingly new but fleshed out details of Tory intentions if they are elected.   The centrepiece was, of course, support for a north-south high speed line, about which more below, but there was also some ...

It was always going to be a momentous year. But 2009 has exceeded expectations with far reaching changes that for the most part a new government is going to find hard to reverse. Just listing all the events in the past year would take up much of this column, so I'll just analyse the implications of a few of them. Crucial to many of these developments has been one man, the ...

When Douglas Alexander was transport secretary and Sea Containers abandoned its GNER contract, he told me that the occasional failure of a franchise showed that the system was working well. It was a sign that the government had got it right as bidders took risks in order to win franchises and sometimes got it wrong. I could not disagree more. The rail industry is based on long term investment, huge fixed ...